Alone

 Pandemic-induced aloneness

    My friend Kyle died in September. An aggressive brain tumor took his life just three months after his first symptom. One day he was feeling fine, going about his business as usual. The next day he was thrashing about on the sidewalk, convulsing uncontrollably as a violent seizure swept through his head.

    The paramedics rushed him to the hospital. Alone. He had brain surgery. Alone. He spent three weeks in the hospital and rehab center recovering. Alone.

    At a time in his life when all he longed for was the presence of his wife of forty years and other loved ones, Kyle was more isolated than he’d ever been before. He was suffering with pain and seizures that the medications reduced but didn’t entirely control. With the shock of learning that he would not survive this cancer. With the helplessness of watching his family and friends struggle through the sorrow that he was causing them. Alone.

    Due to the coronavirus pandemic, he had no visitors, no comfort or touch from the people he valued most. When he was moved to the rehab center, his son-in-law delivered a cell phone to be placed by his bedside. Every morning Kyle’s wife dialed his number, then left the connection open for the remainder of the day. As friends and family members came and went from his home, he could hear their voices, join in their conversations and prayers, feel like a part of the group.

    But it wasn’t the same. He needed people. He needed people with him, beside him, looking into his eyes, touching his hand. Instead, he was alone.

Is God all we need?

    Kyle was one of the most mature Christians I’ve ever met. Even with working full-time for a local business, teaching college and Sunday school classes, reading a wide variety of books, and spending time with his family, he still made regular appointments with other Christian men to sit down with a cup of coffee and talk. He and his friend would share whatever was going on in their lives—the good and the bad, the mundane and the profound, the spiritual questions and insights.

    And then, suddenly, this man who intentionally gave so much time to others was alone. And lonely. He drew great comfort from knowing that the Lord was with him. But since he made it a practice to be honest with God and with people, Kyle occasionally voiced his frustration and his loneliness. Was that okay, or was he failing one of the final tests of his mortal life? Did he really need people, or should he be so content with God’s presence that he never knew the definition of the word lonely?

    “Jesus is all I need.” I hear that message in songs, in church, in Bible studies, in my own head when I’m feeling lonesome or rejected. In one sense, it’s true. Jesus is all we need for our salvation and our relationship with God. No one else can save me. No one else can provide a way into His presence day after day.

    But what about my psychological needs? Some believers openly declare that Jesus is all we need when it comes to loneliness or anxiety or depression or any other type of emotional suffering. They would proclaim that Kyle was falling short of God’s expectations when he expressed a need for human companionship. Jesus was right there with him. What more could he ask for?

    It sounds so spiritual to say that I should be happy, content, filled with the joy of the Spirit even if I’m separated from my loved ones. Even if I’m stranded on a desert island with no human interaction. But is that really God’s plan?

Adam’s need, our need

    I remember the first time a Bible teacher drew my attention to the implications of Genesis 2:18 so many years ago. I had recently found relief from my first depressive episode through an antidepressant. My view of emotions had changed drastically during that experience. I was trying to reconcile real life with the theology I’d heard so often—Jesus was all I needed, even in the emotional realm. I mustn’t be dependent on mere humans when God was there to supply all my needs through Himself alone.

    Then I heard this lesson from Genesis. The Lord God created the heavens and the earth, the sea and the sky, all the plants and all the animals, and, finally, Adam. Each day, for six days, God worked on His creation. And each day He saw that it was good. But after creating Adam, the Lord declared, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” There was one thing, and one thing only that was not good in all of His perfect creation. That one thing was Adam’s aloneness.

    God could have created an Adam who would be perfectly well off with His presence alone. Happy. Content. Filled with the fruit of the Spirit. Without any need for other people. But God didn’t. He chose to create an Adam who needed an Eve. Even before the Fall, Adam had a need that couldn’t be fulfilled without human companionship. How much more do we truly need others?

    Kyle was only one of many, many people hit by the terrible loneliness brought on by the pandemic. Around the time of his passing, the national news spotlighted a group of seniors who had been denied in-person visitors at their care center for months. They were sitting outdoors in their wheelchairs holding signs saying, “I’d rather die of COVID than loneliness.” They were willing to risk their very lives in exchange for a few moments with a loved one.

    I don’t know the best way to handle this coronavirus crisis. It’s painful to see so many dying. It’s equally painful to see the suffering triggered by shutdowns and isolation. But this I do know: We need people. The need is real. Loneliness is not a lack of faith or a sign of spiritual immaturity. God designed us this way even before the Fall.

    So it’s okay to feel it. It’s okay to admit it. And it’s okay to seek relief from it—to seek out and enjoy the fellowship of other human beings (as safely as we can), rather than insisting that God is all I need.

New Creation

 What is this new creation?

    “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Sounds good. I like it. But what exactly does it mean?

    For my first ten years or so in an evangelical church, the implication seemed to be that when we accept Christ everything changes so dramatically that we don’t need to deal with the past. It’s been erased. We’ve been made new. We need to forget what’s behind us and strain toward what’s ahead (Philippians 3:13). This idea wasn’t usually explicitly stated, but the assumption was always there. And it always bothered me.

    Then I met a man named Cory who was a dedicated believer, but who constantly questioned evangelical correctness. God used him to open my eyes to the flaws in evangelical thinking and the shallowness that it encourages.

    Cory helped me to see that we come to Christ with many false beliefs that aren’t just wiped away at the moment of conversion. We come with a heavy load of painful experiences, grudges against those who’ve hurt us, anger, bitterness, and misunderstanding about who God is. Being a new creation doesn’t mean that He just magically makes all our baggage disappear, as so much evangelical teaching implies.

    Then what does it mean? What is the old that’s gone and the new that’s come? Who am I now?

    After struggling with this question for decades, the best explanation I’ve heard goes something like this: what’s gone is the old inability to understand the truth revealed in God’s Word, the inability to develop the fruit of the Spirit, the inability to see and believe and obey.

    And what’s new is our capacity to grow, to overcome the pain of the past, to become more like Christ. We have this capacity because we’ve been given a new spiritual life. We also have the Holy Spirit within to enable us to see where we need to change, to prompt us to want to change, and to strengthen us to persevere so that those changes can happen. We never do this perfectly. We still have a tendency to rebel against our Lord’s attempts to grow us into something better. But this is a truly amazing newness well worth celebrating.

Two models

    Another aspect of the evangelically-correct view of becoming a new creation is the implication that at the moment of salvation I had perfect faith, which led to God’s forgiveness for all my sins. This is what I think of as the “new car” model of the new creation: the new me is like a shiny new car that runs smoothly, looks pretty, and even has its own special smell. It’s perfect.

    I don’t know about anyone else, but at the moment of my conversion, even my faith was warped by my sinful nature. If I’d had to depend on it alone, I wouldn’t have been saved and I wouldn’t be writing these words. It was God’s grace that saved me. He worked through my faith (Ephesians 2:8), but He didn’t sit around waiting until it was perfect, or it never would have happened.

    I’ve heard some people teach that while we’re still sinners, God miraculously creates in us a perfect faith so that we’re able to turn to Him and believe. But that sounds kind of cruel to me. Would a kind and loving God give me such a precious gift, then snatch it away again after I’ve entered His kingdom? It obviously doesn’t last. And yet, if I believe in that perfect faith, I expect myself to live as if it should.

    Life becomes a constant struggle and disappointment. I’m a new creation. I shouldn’t be subject to the old thought patterns and behavioral habits. They’re supposed to be gone. But they’re not. I watch helplessly as my new car ages and rusts and falls apart. Life can never be as good as it was in that moment of my salvation. Is this the resurrection life that Jesus promised me?

    What happens if we change our thinking from a shiny new car to a new baby model? The new creation is like a baby who has a lot to learn and who will make a lot of mistakes as she stumbles along trying to figure out this thing called life.

    A baby isn’t expected to be perfect. She’s expected to mess up, to need direction and correction. Parents don’t give up on their child the first time she falls down as she’s learning to walk. They don’t kick her out of the house the first time she says no to their instructions. Some parents even continue to demonstrate their love to their child when she flaunts God’s standards for sexual purity, when she becomes addicted to drugs, or when she’s arrested for some terrible crime.

    This is how God loves us. He doesn’t expect us to remain a shiny new car day after day. He doesn’t reject us or disown us the first time we stumble. He knows that we started the Christian life as a tiny baby with certain in-born capacities that we didn’t have before, but also with the one-hundred-percent likelihood that we would still sin, still cause Him grief, still hurt ourselves and all of those around us.

    But in His unconditional love, He promises that He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). We have the capacity to resist the draw of worldly comforts and pleasures. But when we give in to them, like a perfect parent He will always be there for us, forgiving us and helping us to overcome those temptations.

Freedom and joy

    How does this impact our everyday lives? Instead of constantly feeling defeated and disappointed in ourselves, we can rejoice in His love and in our small steps of progress. Instead of focusing on the dent in the door or the chip in the paint or the funny sound under the hood of our once-new car, we can marvel in our first words, our first steps, our developing understanding.

    We can witness the changes He’s bringing about in us and live lives of gratitude and praise. We can be certain of His compassion and forgiveness no matter how many times we give in to that same pet temptation. We can be free of the shackles of our own weaknesses even when those weaknesses have not yet been overcome.

    This is the joy of the resurrection life. This is the freedom Jesus promises. He never intended for His followers to live lives of weariness and discouragement, as in the new car model. Instead, He offers us an easy yoke and a light burden (Matthew 11:28-29), as in the new baby model.